


smoke signals

by intrajanelle



Series: tell me about the dream [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, No knowledge of PJO required to enjoy, Percy Jackson/Voltron fusion, Some backstory! And some fluff!, Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 20:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20020759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrajanelle/pseuds/intrajanelle
Summary: Keith was leaving for Camp Half Blood tomorrow for the entire summer and Lance hadn’t spoken to him in three days.





	smoke signals

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for jo for the prompt: keith's first summer away from lance. i never quite got to the summer part.... but one day! i was going to wait to post this until tomorrow, but i decided to put it up early in honor of lance's b-day!
> 
> this is also a stand-alone, kind of prequel to we were in the gold room, so it can be read first. hope y'all enjoy!

Keith was leaving for Camp Half Blood tomorrow for the entire summer and Lance hadn’t spoken to him in three days.

They’d met last fall when Keith had started the sixth grade at Garrison Academy. Lance’s family had just moved to the Bronx from Cuba. They were two seats away from each other in Homeroom. The second day of class Lance proclaimed them to be rivals. From then on he followed Keith around trying to get better scores than him on quizzes and trying to outrace him on the playground. Even though Keith was doing his best to fade into the background. Lance didn’t let him.

The trouble with shadow traveling wasn’t summoning the energy to do it, it was summoning the energy to stop. If he wasn’t careful he could remain an incorporeal shadow creature for the rest of his life. It had been especially bad back then. Shiro and Allura had found him over the summer, being attacked by a gorgon. He’d been on the run for a year and a half. Since he’d come home from school to find his home trashed, his father missing and only a knife from his mother left behind. He’d made it from Texas to Long Island, nearly all the way to Camp Half Blood, with only with the persistent godly intervention of his mother. He may have actually made it too if the gorgon hadn’t caught him unawares.

Anyways. After some heroics, Shiro and Allura had brought him back to camp, where he’d slowly taken one foot out of the shadows. He left one foot in though, just in case, so he could run from monsters or his own mind at a moments notice. And then there was Lance.

Lance who was bright and cheerful and always challenging him to a race or an eating competition or an arm wrestling match. Lance who was always covered in band-aids and patches of grass and smelled like sweat and summer even as the leaves turned brown and gathered at their feet.

Lance who, when James Griffin taunted Keith for something he couldn’t even remember, kicked Griffin in the shin. And then they were inseparable.

That was why, at the prospect of leaving for the entire summer and not saying goodbye to Lance, Keith was climbing Lance’s fire escape at two in the morning.

At some point, Shiro was going to wake up and check on Keith. He did this several times a night. He thought he was stealthy. He was not. When Keith wasn’t there and Shiro came looking for him, well, Keith hoped that a monster found him first.

But Lance was worth it. 

When Keith had told Lance how long he’d be away Lance had been in the middle of a long list of the things they could do together when Keith got back. He was up to eating hot dogs on the Coney Island Ferris Wheel when Keith interrupted him. And told him he wouldn’t be back until the day before school started. Lance had looked slightly green.

Keith knocked hesitantly on Lance’s window. Not wanting to startle him, but needing him to wake up. 

“Lance?” Keith said, knocking again. 

The window flew open. An old woman with rollers in her hair stuck her face out, sending Keith backwards onto his butt. He had never seen her before in his life.

“Young man! What are you doing at this ungodly hour of the night!” The woman shouted. “You are interrupting my post-seance meditation! Where are your parents!”

“Uh,” Keith said. “Lance?”

“Is that your father? Or a request?”

“Lance!” Keith shouted. 

A window two stories up opened with a clatter.

“Keith?” Lance shouted down. 

Keith scrambled to his feet and dodged the old woman’s hand as she reached out to grab him.

“Young man! Come back here!”

Keith saw Lance as he rounded the final stair, pillow creases on his right cheek, his hair sticking up like Alfalfa. His eyes were wide. His lips turning up into a hesitant grin.

“Oh, hi there, are you here for me or am I interrupting you calling on Mrs. Haggar?”

“Shut up, let me in,” Keith said, pushing past Lance and falling into his room. He landed on the floor face first, still breathing fast from running up the stairs. “That was. So scary.”

Lance’s room was a mess as usual. His bed was a nest of pillows and blankets. The only light came from outside the window and the glow-in-the-dark stars Lance’s sister had helped him put on the ceiling. 

Before Lance could say anything, there was a knock on the door.

“Lance? Are you alright? I heard a commotion,” Lance’s mother said.

“It’s fine, mamá. It’s Keith.”

The door opened a crack and Lance’s mom stuck her head in, she noticed Keith on the floor and opened the door wider.

“Keith, is everything okay sweetheart?”

“Yes, sorry to wake you,” Keith said. He felt like his face was on fire. This was not going as well as he’d planned.

“Should I call your guardian?”

Keith shook his head. “He doesn’t have a phone.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “In that case, smoke signals? A pigeon?”

She had a hand on her cheek in concern, but Keith could see the sarcasm sparkling in her eyes. He could see where Lance got it from.

“No thank you Mrs. Ordóñez. I just need to talk to Lance and then I’ll go home,” Keith said.

“Oh no, not at two in the morning Keith Kogane. You’re staying here. Are you hungry?”

Keith shook his head, curling in on himself a little on the floor by Lance’s bed. His dad had been a kind man. A good father. But sometimes he’d been so quiet Keith forgot he was home. Having a mother look him in the eye and parent him was an entirely new experience. A year ago, he may have just shadow travelled halfway across the country from embarrassment.

“Okay, I’ll make breakfast in the morning so no sneaking off.” She closed the door while she said, “Buenas noches, corazoncitos.”

Down the hall Lance’s little brother was whining at them to all shut up. A couple more doors opened then closed and then it was reluctantly quiet.

Behind him, on the bed, Lance was moving around. Keith could hear the bed creaking and things being pushed to the floor and then a sigh.

“Get up here, Keith,” Lance said.

Keith turned to peer over the edge of the mattress and found that Lance had made room for him. He was lying against the wall, half covered in a vibrant rainbow quilt, patting the empty spot.

Keith crawled over without meeting Lance’s gaze. 

“I’m assuming you didn’t come all the way here to flirt with Mrs. Haggar?” Lance whispered.

Keith shook his head.

“You gonna tell me why then.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Keith said, struggling to remember what else he’d wanted to say beyond the obvious.

Lance sighed again. “I _know_ , Keith. I’m not mad anymore. Well, I wasn’t really mad. I just had so many plans for this summer. Last summer, we’d just moved here and I had no friends. I spent most of my time following Veronica around. I’m surprised she didn’t strangle me. Anyways. I thought it would be different this year. Because of you and Hunk and Shiro and Allura. But now you’re all going away and leaving me behind.”

Keith looked at him. He was staring at the stars on his ceiling. From this close, the freckles on his nose made their own tiny constellations.

“I wish you could come with us,” Keith said. 

Lance looked over at him, his eyes, for once, unreadable, as their gazes met over Lance’s pillow.

“But I was thinking,” Keith sat up and fumbled for his backpack, pulling an envelope from the front pocket. Inside was a carefully written letter detailing all the things Keith had wanted to do with Lance that summer, what camp was usually like, sans the hero training, and a serious review of the latest episode of Digimon. “We could exchange letters?”

He pressed the letter into Lance’s hands and watched as he turned it over and over, taking in all the little doodles Keith had scribbled along the edges.

“It won’t be the same, but I’ve never had a friend like you and I don’t want you to forget me this summer,” Keith said, laying back down.

Lance sighed, for what felt like the umpteenth time. “I couldn’t forget you, Keith. That’s the problem.”

He shoved Keith’s letter under his pillow and fumbled for Keith’s hand. They twined their fingers together and Lance closed his eyes.

“Letters sound good. Not ideal. But if it’s the best option, I can compromise,” Lance said. “You better respond to every single one.”

“I will. I promise,” Keith said.

Keith couldn’t remember closing his eyes but soon after that they drifted off to sleep.

+

Keith was in the middle of breakfast the next morning when Shiro showed up. 

Breakfast at the Ordóñez household was quieter than Keith had expected it to be, even with so many people. Lance, Mrs. Ordóñez, and Lance’s littler siblings bantered back and forth for awhile. But the persistent silence and tired grunts of Mr. Ordóñez and Veronica kept the ruckus at a subdued volume. It was nice. 

At home, Keith’s foster parent, Coran, usually made Shiro, Allura, and Keith the guinea pigs for an assortment of experimental recipes; then spent the entire meal grilling them for their opinion even though he rarely made the same thing twice. Once in awhile though, it was nice to have standard breakfast fare. Mrs. Ordóñez made a lot of food and Keith tried a little of everything.

He was just trying a sip of Lance’s cafe con leche, which he was pretty sure Lance had snuck behind his mom’s back, when the doorbell rang.

When Mrs. Ordóñez brought Shiro inside he looked tired. Keith had been braced for anger, but the circles under Shiro’s eyes immediately filled Keith with guilt.

Mrs. Ordóñez tried to get Shiro to stay for breakfast but Shiro turned her down, their ride to Camp Half Blood was in an hour.

In the hall, Lance hugged Keith and wouldn’t let go until he double pinky promised to answer all his letters. He looked a little teary in the dim lighting, but Keith looked away so he could wipe his eyes on his pajamas.

“Don’t be mad at him, Shiro,” Lance said, still holding onto Keith’s arm. “He was ensuring the preservation of a beautiful friendship.”

Shiro laughed a little, which loosened Keith’s shoulders. Sometimes it was easy to forget that Shiro was only two years older than him. He was pretty sure Shiro forgot too.

“I’m not mad, I knew he was here,” Shiro said. He fixed Keith with a raised eyebrow. “Just maybe next time a note? Smoke signals? Something?”

Keith and Lance laughed so hard that it took a full two minutes for Keith to calm down enough to tie his shoes.

As Shiro opened the door, Lance shouted after them.

“I’m gonna have a way better summer than you both and when you come back I’m gonna be super popular!” 

“I’ll miss you too,” Keith said.

Shiro closed the door on Lance’s flushed face. Keith couldn’t wait to see him again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading :)


End file.
